Hot Hiroshima-Style Yaki-on-Yaki Action

On an impulse, today for lunch I swung by Ganbaru-tei, the local Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki shop. Okonomiyaki, for those who don’t know, is a mishmash of things fried together and shaped into a sort of a pancake/pizza-ish shape (you might have heard it referred to as “Japanese pizza”). Hiroshima-style refers to the kind of okonomiyaki that, among other things, adds a layer of yakisoba underneath. Now, although I’ve had okonomiyaki twice since coming here, they were of the traditional potato/yam kind — wonderful, yes, but as a sucker for the Hiroshima style (and for noodles in general), I’d been meaning to go here for a while.

Above is their negi/soba okonomiyaki (~800 yen), listed on their specialty menu, which forgoes the common filling of cabbage with several healthy handfuls of bannou negi (“all-purpose leek/onion/chive”). Despite that, the flavor of the dish wasn’t terribly unbalanced (even if it did skew toward the onion flavor). ◆